As we have always maintained, weight loss is a process which needs a lot of factors to boost it. On the same note, a lot of known and hidden factors can completely stall any weight loss from happening. When you desperately want to shed some kilos to gain better control over your health, it would be prudent to weed out causes that might be behind the “weight creep.” One of the major reasons for weight gain is lack of calorie deficit; however, lifestyle habits are also big contributors to weight gain. Talking about lifestyle, remaining sedentary with limited to very little activity with high-calorie diet would leave a surplus calories in the system which converted into fat molecules and get stored, particularly around the abdominal area. However, if you are doing everything right and cannot put your finger on what’s leading up to the unexplained weight gain, we have listed down a few hidden causes that are preventing weight loss and might be the reason behind sneaking up of extra pounds.
1. Lack of Healthy Fats in Diet: In order to achieve rapid weight loss, a lot of people completely eliminate healthy fats from their diet – which means they get rid of all forms of fat – even healthy fat (avocado, nuts, eggs, yogurt, cheese, and even milk). Healthy fats are an indispensable part of a healthy diet and needed for absorption of certain vitamins and minerals, and they promote fat burning, and regulate appetite. If you have been missing on healthy fats deliberately, it’s time to bring them back.
2. Insulin Resistance: There’s a strong connection between insulin resistance and obesity, and that’s because while insulin does regulate blood sugar levels, it’s also a hormone that triggers formation of fat cells. When the body cells become resistant to the activity of insulin and are unable to utilize glucose, the surplus glucose circulates in the blood, and eventually stored as glycogen, leading to weight gain.
3. You are Eating a Lot of “Ready-to-Eat” Foods: Have you started picking up frozen pizza from the local grocery store? And also other “ready to eat” food that just needs a little hot water to be considered as a meal. These foods are highly processed, high in sodium, transfat content with preservatives and additives to keep them from going bad. Check out Rati Beauty Weight loss diet programs on the Rati Beauty app to find out easy-to-cook, delicious, healthy, and home-cooked food to drop weight.
4. Compromising on Sleep? When you trade-off precious hours of sleep to binge watch television or for spending extra time on the phone, you are giving up real strong chances to lose weight because with less than 7 hours of sleep, the metabolism slumps down, hunger hormone “ghrelin” rises, satiety hormone “leptin” drops, and the dreaded stress hormone “cortisol” also goes up. Less amount of sleep every night is one of the main reasons why people are still overweight with proper diet and exercise.
5. You order food from outside frequently: Ordering food from outside is quite okay, but not every other day of the week because they have loads of oil, salt, and sugar that take up the calorie count to a higher amount.
6. Protein Supplements with High Sodium Content: We hear so much about the importance of protein in weight loss, but some protein powders, like pea protein, have a significant amount of sodium/salt which leads to dehydration, water retention, and triggers fat storage. Read the ingredients list of your protein powder to rule out high sodium related weight gain.
7. You Hardly Stand up on Those Legs: you cannot call yourself “fit” when you are hardly getting up from that chair (and no 30 minutes of exercise before you began work will not help you qualify). Even if you exercise hard for one hour in the morning but spend rest of the day sitting on that chair, in an uncomfortable slouching position, it’s of little use. It’s essential to be active through the day, especially when you are working from home, spending hours together sitting in a single position. An enzyme called “lipoprotein lipase,” which is responsible for burning fat molecules, reduces its “fat-burning activity” by up to 90% when you spend most of your day at the desk, without getting up. Moving around causes the body to release this enzyme that helps to process fat molecules and glucose. Sitting all day long can do to your body the same kind of damage that junk food does.
8. You don’t care about snacks: When you are counting every single calories during breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but let the guards down with snacking, then calories are bound to pile up, especially when the snacks are high in salt, sugar, unsaturated fat, etc.
9. Lack of Portion Control: Even if all the food that you eat through the day is healthy, it is important to exercise portion control and be mindful about the quantity of food with each meal.
10. Still Stuck with the Same Old Workout: It would do a great deal of good by switching workouts because over a period of time, the body gets used to the same workout and burns fewer calories than earlier. Mix cardio and other forms of exercise like yoga and resistance training.
11. Get Checked for Thyroid: Hypothyroidism is a condition where one tends to gain weight along with feeling tired and being sensitive to cold. It would be wise to get the thyroid hormones checked to rule out hypothyroidism.
12. You are Mixing Hunger and Thirst Signals: When the body is dehydrated, it sends mixed signals where the mind is unable to detect whether it’s hungry or just thirsty. Drinking enough water, and through the day, is important to suppress unnecessary hunger pangs.
13. Workout is usually followed by a high-calorie snack: Are your rewarding yourself with a high-calorie meal or dessert after slogging it out for one hour in the gym/home? If yes, you need to completely switch to healthy post-workout meals and not rely on a dessert to amp up the energy levels.
14. Allergic to Certain Foods: All of us are quite familiar with gluten allergy that prevents absorption of nutrients from the gut, but there are other little known food allergies (peanut, milk, soybean, nuts), which can cause inflammation within the body and lead to gaining of pounds.
15. Fixation with Diet and Healthy Foods: Believe it or not, people tend to develop “orthorexia nervosa” which is an eating disorder that makes a person obsessed with healthy eating so much so that it leads to severe calorie restriction. When the calories drop beyond the minimum level, the body starts to cling on to fat storage detecting “starvation mode.” Switch to a healthy diet like Rati Beauty to lose weight without compromising on nutrition.
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